Verbal Abuse
by SillyGoy
Summary: Just how much can you take? Two-shot; rated M for language and for the general theme.
1. Verbal Abuse

**VERBAL ABUSE  
**_A short story by a silly goy_

* * *

Today, is the day.

Today is the day that shall define your views regarding the fairer sex for the rest of your life.

Today is the day when the good angels above will judge your worthiness for a long and happy life with a girl.

Today is the day when you've compressed all of your courage, even the little, far-flung orbs of it at your extremities, to a single focused sphere of indomitable will.

You are ready. You've convinced yourself you are ready. You've showered and groomed, tailored yourself to be as presentable as possible. You've looked at yourself in the mirror, caught your eye, and found only macho confidence and an aura of irresistibility. You've inspected your gifts for the fifth meticulous time, and did not find them wanting. Just to say that you are ready for today would be but an understatement, for by God, if you aren't ready to take on anything. You even clicked the heels of your shined, handsome leather shoes once when you left your home to underscore your undoubtable triumph of the day.

So why, then, were you rejected?

"Disgusting!"

"Who is this loser?"

"Did the guards really allow a bum like you into our base, or did you sneak in, you worm?"

"Perrine-chan, that's mean… but, then again…"

"Ehh, he kind of smells…"

The voices - mocking you, mocking you and making fun of you. Nothing's changed, nothing at all. The muffins you brought for Lynnette are on the floor and so are you, on your knees and elbows, spittle dripping from your mouth, snot oozing from your gargantuan nostrils, and rivers of tears gushing out of your tear ducts. You are not handsome. No tailor in the world can hide the ugly rolls of fat that cling onto your body. You did not even consult a barber for the unkempt neckbeard stuffed with your sweat hanging from underneath your chin. And the soap would have hid your smell, had you not masturbated profusely before heading out to relieve your paramount stress, such was the stench of your foul essence.

"Why did you come here?", cuts one voice, sharp and clear, of controlled, military-perfect discipline, demanding only the swiftest and concise of responses: something which you are not able to provide, as the shock of rejection still haunts you.

"Why did you come here, civilian?!", the control is lost, and Major Sakamoto's voice is so powerful that you are forced to sit up. Which means you can witness your gawkers eyeing you with clear pity, disgust and hatred.

Shirley, Lynnette, Yoshika, Perrine, Gertrud, Mio, Erica. The rest are not here with you, mercifully whisked away by obligation so that they may not sully themselves by knowing of your sad existence.

"I..", you manage, tears in your eyes. They notice. They cringe. You cringe inwardly. It hurts.

"... d-don't know."

How pathetic.

Even the janitor at some distance away, pretending so hard that he is oblivious to what is going on as he expertly mops the floor, does so. Just to get away however temporarily from your trauma, you slightly squint your bespectacled eyes to focus on his nametag. Rutherford, it said. Ernest Rutherford.

But that information is irrelevant to the situation at hand.

"Ara," Mio cooed, her voice uncharacteristically womanly with sultriness and implied passion. This is the voice you fantasize about every night. And now it is here deriding you with unhidden glee. "Judging from the shit you've brought, you must be one of our fans."

She walks forward, towards you. Her subordinates part slightly for their matriarch. Her gait is hypnotizing: the mild swinging of her hips and the contortion of her waist almost drive you insane with their promise. Her legs, bare below her panties, are bathed with a sheen that just goes to show how perfectly smooth her skin is. That thin mouth, angular face and orderly bangs which seem to be typical of Oriental women, are made more charming by the eyepatch she wears. It's cute, you think, somehow managing to do so even with the trauma that's building up within you.

"And judging from how you look," she continues. "You must be one big fucking loser."

Now that stung. You are not quite sure what sin you've committed upon these angels of death to deserve this verbal abuse, but you take it anyway. Submission has always been an integral part of your character. After all, momma always protected you when you were a child, sheltered you all throughout highschool and picking you up after dismissal, and still cares for you even if you are quite jobless and twenty-six years old.

You are five years older than the girl in front of you. Wider, too. Taller by inches. Your flabby forearm dwarfs hers by twice its size. But in terms of will, she is the Sun, and you are planet Pluto. And your will is broken. Your lips contort downward and your eyes shrink in a most infantile manner as you begin to sob openly: hiccups expressing your frustration and hurt. Loud ones, too. But they sound like the snorts of a piglet. Understandably, the very people whom you admire and stand before you, are utterly and undeniably and without reason for doubt, very, very grossed out.

A few stray strands of your greasy long hair find themselves over your face. Your tears and snot and saliva glue them onto your skin. The tips of a couple end up in your mouth. You notice. They notice. They cringe. You cringe. The janitor cringes. The statue on your left cringes. The statue on the right cringes. The portrait over at the far wall cringes. Everyone cringes, even the castle itself. At you. And you alone.

A scowling Erica clicks her tongue in displeasure. "Geez, can this guy be even more pathetic?"

Mio takes advantage of Karlsland's top ace's sudden quip. She glares one thousand bayonets at you, but each one is laced with the poison of sadistic malice. "Hora, buta-kun, your idols find you disgusting. You shouldn't have come here."

You nod frantically. You tried to nod only a little, but you couldn't. Thus you embarrass yourself further. You hear Shirley mutter, "Goddamn, this guy…"

"I'm glad you agree with me, buta-kun," she suddenly smiles, and bends down to eye-level with you, those hands, that had seen so much battle but not calloused at all and looking quite soft to the touch, resting on her knees. Thus will the simple act of smiling begin to haunt you starting now, because hers is so beautiful, and yet so dreadful. It hurts so much, because she hates you!

"Now then, will you promise us that you will never, ever visit us or any other witches again? We're very busy girls, you see, doing very important work. And we don't like seeing things that would, say, lower our morale."

As if she isn't making it clear enough, she continues, "Your very presence here is a detriment to the war effort, buta-kun. Now that's a criminal offense. Do you want to get jailed?"

You shake your head vigorously, while moaning loudly in inflection of the negative. You've always had a tendency to exaggerate, oftentimes without you consciously choosing to do so, it just happens. But this little tendency of yours has embarrassed you yet again. You cringe. They don't. Because they're used to you further humiliating yourself on your own accord. You then cringe because they don't cringe. This is a change that is profoundly uncomfortable. You don't like change, never had. This is why you fear the responsibility of adulthood so much.

"Good, buta-kun," she finishes, rising up. "Now, get out of our sight. Rutherford!"

The Janitor lifts his chin up. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Escort the civilian away from base grounds. And clean up the garbage he's brought to us."

"At once, ma'am."

"C'mon, girls. This sad fellow is not worth our time."

The witches then begin to retreat, towards the far hallway. Erica takes a moment to stick her tongue at you. In another certain situation, you would find the gesture quite cute, erotic even, so sick are you. But in this case, it just hurts; it hurts so much. They remark about you as they withdraw.

"What happened to the cute ones? Such an ugly one at this new post is bad luck..."

"He smelled really bad."

"His stench was of his own sadness. Mind it not."

"To think we fight for such people…"

"I think he soiled himself…"

"In Fuso, fat old men like him commit the most heinous of crimes…!"

Adding insult upon insult to an already bulging mountain of them, the witches finally take a turn at the end of the hall and go out of your sight. It is thus that you realize that you are defeated, and slink back on your rump onto the floor, your face marred with tears and - you just noticed! - your pants brown and yellow with your expunged fear. You smell it. The janitor smells it, and he immediately takes the face towel he likes to hang over his shoulder to cover his nose, tying it behind his neck.

"Jesus, dude," he remarks. "The hell's wrong with you?"

Fastening his mop on his janitor's cart, he picks up your mostly intact box of muffins your mother had baked especially for Lynnette. You are sure that they are delicious - you have not eaten even one; you are a picky eater and do not like muffins - and you inwardly lament their loss. It hurts, because you love your mother and to see her work go to waste is just…

"I'd eat these," the janitor says while picking the box up. "But… no, man. Just no."

He shoves your present right into the trash can on his cart.

"And get up. Your shit's getting on the floor."

Gingerly, you do so, but you have difficulty due to your whale-rivaling weight. You are still crying. He doesn't cringe when he regards the wet trails rolling down your plump cheeks. Why would he? He's used to it now. But the fact that he is just makes you feel even sadder. Hell, you feel like the lowest possible human being right now. You step away from your sitting place.

There's a wet spot right where you had sat. That smudge of brown, mixed with that tiny pool of yellow, is a testament to your undeniable stupidity.

It is with clear displeasure that he takes a sprayer and wets the floor preemptively, before emptying a sachet of liquid soap upon the ugly chocolate fetus that is your expelled pride. Then he takes the mop, soaks it with the nearby bucket of water, and rams its head against the ground angrily.

"Goddamn it," you hear him mutter. "They don't pay me enough for this shit. Heh. This shit."

It is clear that he wanted you to hear it. You would ask him of it, but he would just feign ignorance. How could he continue the torment the witches had abandoned with his own?

You could do nothing but stare dumbly as he expertly cleans your stain. What else can you do? What else can you do, with a trail of piss and shit running from your crotch to your heel? What else can you do, after all of that verbal abuse?

Nothing. You can do nothing. Because you are craven, because you are humiliated, because you are unsure and uncertain of everything after the suffering you just endured. It's so embarrassing, you believe, that it's all over for you.

You would gladly just die right now and be done with it all.

"Hey! Are you listening? Follow me, dammit!"

You are snapped out of your thoughts by the beckoning janitor, who has already begun to leave you in his wake as he takes his cart and heads outside. You, left with no other reasonable option, follow him, in your white tuxedo suit that threatens to rip at the seams and explode the buttons from the pressure given out by the weight it barely hides and contains.

Sunlight bathes you as you step outside of the grand double-doored entrance, but in your shame, you cannot bring yourself to look up and just admire how beautiful the summer day is, with bright, blue skies peopled with clouds both thin and obese - obese like you! - who go about lazily and carelessly to the plight of man, who is set upon by the Neuroi threat like prey is to a predator. Instead, your gaze is cast downwards, apparently finding something incredibly interesting in the cobblestone that fills your path to the gates. Thoughts fill your cranium, of just why and how you performed badly. Weren't you ready for this day? Wasn't this the day of triumph?! The day of love?!

You lift your chin up. The tears have stopped. You take a moment to dab them away with a handkerchief from your red face. Then, while walking, you call out,

"Rutherford." The janitor in question grunts with hostility, almost dissuading you from asking, "Am I really that bad?"

Ernest Rutherford stops his cart, audibly breathes in very deeply the salty breeze of the nearby sea, turns around with a very calm look, and then stares dead into your eyes.

"What do you think?"

Before taking his cart by its handles once more and continuing your journey to the main gates that exit into the great city of Venice. You were expecting a more straightforward answer, not a riddle, not something you would have to ponder over, but instead of asking the good janitor to kindly rephrase, you just dip your chin down and follow him. You almost bump your head against the wrought-iron framework of the gate as he opens it for you, because weren't paying attention, so absorbed were in your thoughts. Thoughts of what were, thoughts of what could have been. Regret. So much regret.

"We're here. And like the Major said, please don't come back. And work yourself out, man, you're terrible!"

He ushers you out, and slams the gates shut, turning leftwards to dispose his cleanup into a ready dumpster. Then, from the corner cafe, your mother comes: a plump, makeup-caked, rosy-cheeked woman who waddles from across the street to come pick you up. She notices your terrible state and makes the face of a concerned puppy as she tries to cheer you up.

"Darling, how did it go wrong? And you're so handsome, too! My, those witches are truly fools for not going for a catch such as yourself!"

Your mother's well-meaning but love-blinded encouragements are the final nail to your emotional crucifixion. You're done. Just finished.

You loll your head back against the gate, and roll your eyes upward to look at the sky as you gather your thoughts, ignoring your mother's inquiries. Bloody hell, this shouldn't have happened. You shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning; that bad spaghetti you ate last night should have done you in for today. Maybe then you would have been spared this humiliation, and maybe a day of bedrest would have dissuaded you from this foolish and nonsensical quest for the witches' affections.

You are ashamed. Of yourself. Of your upbringing. Of your incompetence and weakness, of your insecurities and even your little strengths. This was your best, yet your best was crushed under the boot of rejection and scorn.

You wish you were, instead, free of problems and fear, head rested upon the root of a leafless tree as you stare at the bright, blue sky. Maybe you would even do it like in the movies, pick a flower or leave up, twirl and twist it with your fingers, examine it just before the credits roll. But this isn't a movie. This is real life.

And you wish you were never born.

* * *

**A/N: **If you managed to read this story entirely, then you have my congratulations.


	2. Escalation

**A/N:** This is strangely fun to write.

* * *

**ESCALATION  
**_A short story by a silly goy_

* * *

It is the overmorrow. And today, once again, is the day.

For today is the day whose myriad outcomes shall live with you for the rest of your life.

For today is the day when the good angels' faces above shall turn sour as they are the witnesses to your bold act.

For today is the day when you've surprised yourself by gathering more courage than you did two days ago.

For today is the day when you're going to fulfill your most aching wish; for today is the day when you're holding a kitchen knife to your throat.

(And in private, too, since momma has work this week starting today and won't be back till the afternoon!)

It's a strange and most liberating feeling, to act upon your convictions, to act upon strong emotion, for most of your life you've been quite apathetic. The verbal abuse you had just suffered from the ones you idolize had broken a dam within your heart, the mask, the barrier keeping in your bottled insecurities and frustrations. When you came home the other day, you locked yourself in your room and cried until you could no more, but somehow still sobbed even when the little needle pointed to one and the dark streets were deserted but for some shady, trench coat-wearing characters.

You could not sleep. Could not bear to sleep. You swam in your thoughts and your thoughts swam in your mind. The embarrassment, the humiliation. So much stimulation for one day that you were overloaded. You did not even eat dinner, not even responding as your mother rapped on your firmly locked door and begged you to do so with an inflection of voice that seemed to indicate her closeness to weeping. Such is the love your mother harbors for you. Even though you are a financial liability. Even though you are a reminder of a painful "love" to her in the past, an innocent girl in her twenties deceived by a snake who abandoned her for her lack of sound judgement.

And the shock of it all still rings through your fatty chest. You believe you've been traumatized by it. How can you not, for didn't you suddenly claw your much-loved posters of the various witches from the walls of your room? Mio Sakamoto, Wilma Bishop, Hanna-Justina Marseille, Cecilia Miles - their pretty, smiling faces, and wonderfully contoured feminine bodies underlined by the sharp maleness of their military uniforms: you dragged your nails against them until they broke, and then resorted to dragging your fingertips instead until they bled in a vain effort to kill them in a sick, metaphysical kind of way. You were not aware of when first blood was drawn, but when you had stopped whimpering with your eyes closed to see your destructive work, you restrained yourself at the sight of your very own red essence splattered on the wall in stark bands going downwards.

The pain set in not too many seconds later, and you went to your bathroom to run cold water over your wounds, while you looked at yourself in the mirror over the sink. Your cheeks and the general shape of your face have always been pudgy; you never lost weight since middle school. Your eyebrows are thick, bushy and rectangular owing to the boar-like genetics of your parentage. Your eyes are of an unremarkable dark brown and slightly cross-eyed, which is why you wear an unaesthetic pair of round-lensed glasses. With regards to hair, it is long and greasy, going over your ears, rounding over your shoulders, and terminating just below them. A stupid-looking thin mustache more at home on the pimpled face of a highschool boy than a twenty-six-year-old adult like yourself sits on top of your strangely puffy, chapped lips. Thick, curly growth of black facial hair gives you a neckbeard. Often, it is stuffed with your foul-smelling sweat.

The year is nineteen forty-four. People, in the rare occasions that you go out of your home, often think you're a belligerent homeless drunk or a bum.

And as if you weren't ugly enough, many parts of your piglet face were, and still are, swollen due to your incessant weeping.

And yesterday, you only came out of your room to eat, for your stomach, unused to hunger, screamed out at you and forced you to act. Your mother tried to give you a scolding, but she conceded defeat to her love for you and embraced you instead. So she treated you with two of your favorites: pork chops and chocolate cake. Even if the financial setback of the renting of your expensive tuxedo suit (which you soiled) still plagues your two-person household. You feel guilty for being so spoiled, but you said nothing as your mother watched with stars in her eyes as you gorged yourself on your little imbibement of fat, sugar and calories. But there was something on her face, a group of wrinkles that could have betrayed-

No! Nonsense! She can't be losing affection for you. After all, she just loves you so much, you utter failure, that you think she's dumb. For, as you reviewed earlier, you are nothing but a financial liability and the product of a one-sided relationship.

You literally do almost nothing to better yourself, and a great ominous burden clouds over you as week by week, you watch your mother age. This fills your heart with despair. For your self-help was only performed at her encouragements: enrolling in college: you didn't even attend the entrance examinations, couldn't get in; finding a job: you picked up a newspaper, went to the classified ads section, stared at it for a moment, and then put it down; grooming yourself: you were too nervous to go to the barber and get rid of all that hair.

Visiting the witches? Also her work of encouragement for her beloved son. Months of reassurances, months of effort, and you began to believe her. That you are handsome. That you are strong. That you are a good catch. Because you've always put the opinion of your parent over yours, because, well, what do you know? Very little. You think yourself an idiot.

An embarrassing memory suddenly presents itself before you: you went to the store that one day because mommy wasn't home and you were hungry; and she left you some money for you to buy snacks with. Of course, your natural social anxiety makes it so that you barely use it, but that one day was an exception. So you walked unsurely, shuffling your elephant feet, drawing stares from the more orderly persons on the street, and meeting their gazes with a puppy-like pathetic look you weren't even aware you had on you, thus making them flick their eyes away. You remember one parasol-holding woman who looked very pretty, and made you uncomfortable with that simple fact. But that isn't the embarrassing part.

A military officer on leave or something, suddenly approached you and began to berate you loudly for your neckbeard and grossly unkempt hair. He stressed the importance of keeping one's face shaven to wear gas masks in case of a Neuroi attack. Of Romagnan stock, like you, he had a thin mustache. Only that his was handsome. And yours was dumb.

Panic struck you. You made an infantile face of shock and sorrow, and just kept saying "What?" over and over again in your ignorance of conversational discourse until he concluded you a madman and went away, warning you not to come out of your hole ever again. You came home immediately afterwards, bawling out tears and locking yourself in your room.

Your room. How you both love and loathe this place. For it is both a prison and a home, a place wherein you can feel trapped and comfortable at the same time. You've spent so much time here that you're sure it smells like you. The fact that you clean it at least once every week is perhaps proof that you've at least a modicum of self-responsibility, but strangely you have not yet cleaned the bloodstains or removed the torn posters from the walls. You have not, for you have decided with finality of achieving that one, sweet and oh so far wish that had been abstract like a haunting ghost before but made terribly concrete in front of those wrought-iron gates, in that crowded street, next to your worried mother. So what was the point of cleaning them, then? Why go through all that effort when it is for naught after you've used the glimmering blade of this kitchen knife you hold?

Your fingers tremble around the grip. The scratched surface of the metal winks at you as you angle and angle it again under the illumination of the light bulb. You let the words play in your head again, one by one: _I am going to put this to my throat and slash myself_.

Again.

_I am going to put this to my throat and slash myself._

And again.

_I am going to put this to my throat and slash myself._

And again and again.

_I am going to put this to my throat and, slash myself._

Doubt creeps from the recesses of your very heart, and it stains the latest incantation of your courage-checking chant with that little pause, that little comma. You change the wording, make it less fluffy, something more down-to-earth. For this is a very big decision that could affect the (very few) people whom you know personally drastically. So you decide not to sugarcoat it. And thusly the string floats at the front of your mind, from left to right:

_I am going to kill myself._

Again.

_I am going to kill myself._

Again!

_I am going to kill myself._

With conviction!

_I am going to kill myself!_

Not enough!

_I am going to kill myself!_

Louder!

_I am going to kill myself!_

LOUDER!

_I AM GOING TO KILL MYSELF!_

EVEN LOUDER!

**_I AM GOING TO KILL MYSELF!_**

Then do it.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Steel is cold. Dangerously cold. Frighteningly cold. It's sharp, too. You feel a little itch over your adam's apple. You've managed to will your hand to stop shaking, and so this feeling of coldness is constant. Your eyes are unfocused, bleary, staring at the air. Potent emotions rise and fall within your troubled mind and exhausted chest like the bubbles in a lava lamp. Today is the day. Today is indeed the day. Just one swipe of your forearm, once great contraction of your fat-burdened muscle, and it would sink into you and free you once and for all from this awful, awful world. One single motion. That is all it takes, piglet. One, single, motion.

Sweat beads across your forehead, runs down and over your cheeks when it has accumulated enough mass, and is sucked by your neckbeard. Snot oozes from your nose. Your lips are parted in a grimace which quiver with every sob. And with every sob comes an accompanying gush of air from your throat, which makes your slimy spit bubble through the little gaps in your crooked teeth. Crooked, like your glasses; you have not bothered to readjust them when you accidentally made afoul its perch over your bulbous nose. Why would you? This is the end, after all. Like you reviewed earlier, you should not waste the effort.

But you digress. You must focus at the task at hand. Focus. Focus. You are so close: knife to your bare neck, steel aching for blood, soul begging for release. One key, one swipe - the doorknob will turn on its own and so will the door. So do it, then. Unlock yourself.

Liberate yourself with the embrace of death.

So die, then.

.

.

.

.

.

.

You can't do it.

You can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it.

You can't do it.

You just can't.

What a stupid move.

You let the knife drop. You're scared. Too scared. It clatters onto the floor, and winks once more at you with an instant of reflected light. You cannot see it, but your face is beet red and utterly slick with perspiration. Your lips quiver again, your nose wrinkles, and you snarl: a prelude to yet another sobbing session, dehydrating your eyes of tears whose ducts are already exhausted and overworked. Why, why, why? Why you were ever born? Why does the release of life demand so much pain? Why can't it ever be easy? Why can't it be so simple? Just why?

So craven are you to the solution. The only solution. The final solution to your worries. You can't do it; you lack the spine. And are you fine with that?

For the time being, yes.

You throw your arms to the sides, palms facing upwards. You also lift your chin up, looking at the ceiling like you can somehow see through it and behold the figure of God. You shake your hands and wordlessly communicate countless questions to Him. He, who does not seem to reserve for you the mercy the priests claim He offers anyone who joins His flock. Does He hate you?

Yes. You conclude that He does. And so you come to hate Him.

So not only are you a fat, virgin loser, you are also a heretic now.

Oh well. Aren't you used to this now, adding label upon negative label onto yourself as time goes by?

For twenty-six years you've lived and for most of that you've done nothing but hate yourself and regret most of your more outward actions. For most of your youth, you've done nothing but shrink inwardly. So much regret, so much regret. Regret. Regret. Regret. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Incompetence. Failure. Virgin. Loser. Fat. Stupid. Heretic. Dumb.

"_And judging from the way you look, you must be one big fucking loser."_

"_I'd eat these… but no, man. Just no."_

"_Oh honey, you look so handsome in that suit! My, my, your bowtie's all crooked; let me fix that right up. Mmm, oh baby, my little boy's finally gonna get himself a girl!"_

"_What do you mean, 'what what what'? Don't you know any other word? Are you stupid or something?"_

"_And work yourself out, man. You're terrible!"_

"_Uhm. That'll be thirty lire, please."_

You fall flat on your back. You're done. You're just so done. You're not sure if you can cry anymore. You roll onto your side and just begin to stare blankly at a section of the floor three inches away. No thoughts come to your head, just little sparks of regret and hatred. You think your mind may have been broken. You don't know what to do from now on, don't know how to proceed from this day. It's terrible, a terrible feeling. Why are you such a failure?

You don't know if you're going to attempt this again. It's too scary.

So you decide that next time will be with a pistol.

* * *

**A/N:** The author wishes to express that he experienced sorrow and distress while writing this story and had difficulty putting his ideas into words. Still does he offer hearty congratulations to the souls who managed to stomach this story and complete it.


End file.
